60 .., r- - .. ,,1*, "'.... ,-,ç, , ' y ' .. \ + l' , \ , ,, \ ,..fl<" , \ t /, '" . " .. CJ/< (JI ,_ / j " g answer to the eternal fashwn quest is pure virgin wool in the great Pendleton tradition. Like this woolknit suit $85, and tri-cowr shell $25. Together they are fashion as unique and individual as çhe-so real, .")0 woman, so 6!tndleton At fine stores or wnte Dept. N-119 Pendleton Woolen PWM MIlls, Portland, Oregon 97201 · Pure Vlrgm Wool 1969 " , in tended to do a film on space and inquiring whether Clarke had any ideas along those lines, he responded immediately and enthusiastically. Clarke had seen Kubrick's "Lolita" and admired it greatly, but had nev- er met him. Kubrick, for his part, ha ving started to soak up space lore, found that Clarke's name was at the end of every avenue of inquiry. As it happened, Clarke at about thIs time was scheduled to go to New York to work on a Time-Life book called "Man and Space," so he made ar- rangements to see Kubrick, who was then living in the city. In N ew York, Clarke installed himself in the Hotel Chel"ea, which is his headquarters whenever he is here. He and Ku- brick first met for lunch at Trader Vic's, where they talked for several hours. In the days that followed, Clarke recalls, "I was working at Time-Life during the day and moon- lighting with Stanley in the evenings, and as the Time-Life joh phased out Stanley phased in. \V e talked for weeks and weeks-sometimes for ten hours at a time-and wandered all over New York. \Ve went to the GuggenheIm and to Central Park, and even to the World's Fair. \Ve considered and dis- carded literally hundreds of ideas, which I shall be mining for short stories for vears to come. \Vhen you read them, you won't have thè slightest sus- picion that they were connected with '200 1.'" In time, the two men set- tled on a documentary-like depiction of planetary exploration, to which Ku- brick gave the half-serious ti- tle "How the Solar System \Vas \Von." Kubrick then suggested that they write a novel on which they could base the eventual screenplav. "That way, Stanlev thought, we would generate more ideas, and give the project more body and depth," Clarke explains. Clarke re- tired to the Hotel Chelsea with an electric typewriter, and for the next several months he and Kubrick produced a couple of thousand word a day. He found this period an extremely happy one, and he memorialized it in a little parody of "Kubla Khan": For M-G-M did Kubrick, Stctn, A stately astrodome decree, While Art, the science ,vriter, ran Through plots incredible to man In search of solvency. By 1965, "How the Solar System Was ,^T on" had transformed itself in to the enormously ambitious theme of a space odyssey. Almost from the begin- AVCiUST 9. '9 b 9 ning of his study of space literature, Clarke has been struck by the similarI- ties, aesthetic and philosophical, be- tween space voyages and the ancient voyages of the Greeks. He is very much concerned about the fact that there arc no geographical frontiers left on the earth to drain off our exploratorv en- ergy. He feels that manned space flIght, apart from whatever scientific and technological results it will have, pro- vides the necessary new frontier. Five years before Clarke began working on "200 1," he published a collection of essays entitled "The Challenge of the Spaceship," in whIch, at the end, he pays a trihute to Homer: Across the gulf of centuries the blind smile of Homer is turned upon our age. Along the echoing corridors of time, the roar of the rockets merges now with the creak of wind-taut rigging. For some- where in the \vorld today, still uncon- scious of his destiny, ,valks the boy ,vho will be the first Odysseus of the Age of Space. \Vhile the} were working on the film, Clarke once remarked to Ku- brick, "If thIs film can be completely understood, then we will }rave failed." \Vhat he meant was that he and Kubrick were trying to evoke an awareness of an intelligence infinite- ly old and infinitely dIfferent from any- thing that we can now know or imag- ine. By definition, such an intelligence could not be understood by us, and its workings, by Clarke's Third Law, would be to us indistinguishable from magic. \Vhether or not "200 1" has been completely understood, Clarke is delighted with it, and he is fond of quoting a critic who remarked that vis- ually it was so heautiful that "one could take any frame, blow it up, and hang It on the wall." SPEe D L'M\T .... .... ...... :. : .- . ..... ..... ....-- W HEN in residence in Colombo, Clarke be- gins his day promptly at seven o'clock with the serving of the morning tea-needless to say, Ceylo- nese tea. His at-home attire consists of a sarong-the local costume-and sandals. (At the timè of my visit, he was favoring a snappy blue number that bore a family resemblance to his living- room curtains.) Thus attired, Clarke transits from his bedroom through Thambi's office and into what he calls his "ego chamber." This is where he works, and it is also a sort of livIng mu- seum of Clarke memorabilia. It con- tains the Zeiss microscope; a very elab- orate German shortwave radio; two